BLACK PLEASE…NO SUGAR, NO MILK…Thanks!. This is how I say it now but it wasn’t like that few years back.

As I shifted my coffee preference from 3-in-1 instant coffee mix to a more “real” coffee taste, I began visiting coffee shops/cafe. They were mainly the chained cafes such as Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and the likes. With enticing advertisements, these chained cafes introduced me to the world of the Frappuccinos, Iced Lattes, Coolers, and other blended coffee menu options. My search for the real coffee taste somehow got derailed a bit with me being introduced to something tasting more like milk shakes than coffee. The bad part: I liked them, really liked them. It was a choice between soda or Frappuccino…between ginger ale or mocha cooler…between orange juice or anything much more sweeter and presented as a “coffee drink”. In all essence it was just a more expensive, sweeter, and more fashionable 3-in-1 coffee mix…and even perhaps, unhealthier! For a good number of years I was hooked to ice blended coffee. Looking back, it’s really not coffee but something else. It took me, however, sometime to realize this and a trip to Italy that nudged me into again re-start my search for the real coffee taste.

It was my visit in Italy (Bologna and Milan) that finally gave me a better perspective and appreciation of coffee and the culture that goes along with it. I did try to test my luck and find me a Frappuccino but to no avail. It’s simply non-existent in Italy. What were in abundance though were good coffees and amazing coffee shops. This was when I got introduced to real coffee…black coffee…either an espresso or a lungo (longer espresso: espresso with more water)…without milk…without sugar. It was an eye-opener, an amazing experience– I became a convert!

Now I am just mostly taking black coffee may it be a regular brewed coffee, an espresso or a lungo (alternatively called in many countries as: Americano). Sometimes I do drink a cappuccino or a latte– as long as I could get the coffee taste and not the milky taste.

I like my coffee black and I guess, there is no turning back on black!